Family as Educator, Parent Education, and the Perennial Family Crisis.

Schlossman, Steven L.

Three areas are addressed in this paper: the family-in-crisis motif; the family as educator; and parent education. (1) The family in crisis: The family-in-crisis motif pervades both professional and popular commentary on the contemporary American family. There are powerful continuities in our perception of the American family crisis in every decade of the 20th century. (2) The family as educator: Most educational history during the past century has focused on the public school as society's chief "culture factory" and agency of "social reproduction." The study of the family as educator remains largely outside the mainstream of educational history. Unique among educational historians, Cremin's concept of educational configuration calls attention to the central role of families as educators. (3) Parent education: Parent education is a wholly inadequate organizing principle for comprehending or remedying the problems which parents as educators face today. Proponents of parent education tend to see parent education as a solution for deeply-rooted social problems; to exaggerate the power of parents alone to control their children's destinies; to delimit woman's potential social contribution to the domestic sphere without placing corresponding constraints on men; and to be naively subservient to the latest findings of psychological science. There are indications of several parallels in parent education between the 1920's and the present. (Author/RH)